'Well, then, which shall I take?'
'The dealer,' I replied, 'recommends these,' and I pointed to the banded ones. 'Personally, if I may, I recommend the others.'
I could not resist giving him this chance for a display of courtesy.
He took it. 'I will follow your advice,' he said, but let me stand there holding both boxes while he stared first down at them and then up at me.
'Armand?' he asked softly beneath the music.
'Milord?'
He changed his manner of address. 'Felix?'
'Milord wishes?' I asked, smiling.
'You wouldn't like, would you,' he said without raising his eyes from the cigars, 'to exchange hotel work for a position as a valet?'
There I had it.
'How so, milord?' I asked in apparent incomprehension.
He pretended I had asked 'With whom?' and answered with a slight shrug of the shoulders: 'With me, that's very simple. You will accompany me to Aberdeen and Nectan Hall Castle. You will take off this livery and exchange it for ordinary clothes, distinguished clothes that will indicate your position and set you off from the other servants. There are all sorts of servants there. Your duties would be confined entirely to personal attendance on me. You would be with me all the time, at the castle and at the summer estate in the mountains. Your salary,' he added, 'will be, presumably, two or three times what you make here.'
I was silent, and he did not prompt me to speak by glancing at me. Instead, he took one of the boxes from my hand and compared that brand with the other.
'This requires careful consideration, milord,' I replied finally. 'I need not say that I am greatly honoured by your offer. But it comes so unexpectedly.... I must take time for consideration.'
'There is very little time for consideration,' he replied. 'Today is Friday, I leave on Monday. Come with me! It is my wish.'
He took one of the cigars I had recommended, regarded it thoughtfully from all sides, and passed it under his nose. No observer could have guessed what he was saying as he did so. What he said softly was: 'It is the wish of a lonely heart.'
Who so inhuman as to reproach me for feeling moved? Yet I knew at once I would not choose this by-path.
'I promise your lordship,' I murmured, 'that I will make good use of this period of reflection.' And I withdrew.
He has, I thought, a good cigar to go with his coffee. That combination is highly enjoyable, and enjoyment is, after all, a minor form of happiness. There are circumstances in which one must content oneself with it.
This thought was a tacit temptation to try to help him to help himself. But there now ensued trying days when, at each meal and after tea as well, his lordship would glance at me once and say: 'Well?' I either lowered my eyes and raised my shoulders as though they were heavy-laden, or I replied anxiously: 'I have not yet been able to reach a decision.'
His sensitive mouth became steadily more bitter. But although his ailing sister might have eyes for his happiness alone, had he considered the painful role I would have to play among the numerous servants of whom he had spoken and even among the Gaelic mountaineers? Their contempt, I said to myself, would strike not the great lord but the plaything of his whim. Secretly, despite all my sympathy, I considered him guilty of egotism. If only in addition to this I had not had to keep a close rein on Eleanor Twentyman's demands for untrammelled speech and action!
At dinner on Sunday a lot of champagne was drunk. His lordship, to be sure, drank none, but at the Twentymans' table corks were popping and I thought to myself that this was not good for Eleanor. My concern proved to be justified.
After dinner I served coffee as usual in the lobby. A glass door covered with green silk led from the lobby into a library with leather armchairs and a long table for newspapers. This room was little used; at most, a few people sat there in the morning and read the newly laid-out papers. Guests were really not supposed to remove them from the library, but someone had taken the Journal des Débats into the lobby and had left it on the chair beside one of the little tables. In my orderly fashion I rolled it around its staff and carried it back into the empty reading-room. I had just arranged it in its proper place on the long table when Eleanor came in, and it was clear to see that a few glasses of Moët-Chandon had been too much for her. She came straight up to me, quivering and trembling, threw her thin, bare arms around my neck and stammered:
Armand, I love you so desperately and helplessly, I don't know what to do, I am so deeply, so utterly in love with you that I am lost, lost, lost. ... Speak, tell me, do you love me a little bit, too?'
'For heaven's sake, Miss Eleanor, be careful. Somebody might come in. Your mother, for instance. How on earth did you manage to get away from her? Of course I love you, sweet little Eleanor! You have such touching collarbones, you are such a lovely child in every way. ... But now take your arms from around my neck and watch out. ... This is extremely dangerous.'
'What do I care about danger? I love you, I love you, Armand, let's run away together, let's die together, but first of all kiss me. Your lips, your lips, I am dying for your lips!'
'No, dear Eleanor,' I said, gently attempting to loosen her embrace, 'we won't begin that. You have been drinking champagne, several glasses, I think, and if I kiss you now, it will be all up, you will be inaccessible to any sensible idea. I have, after all, candidly explained to you how unnatural it is for the daughter of parents like Mr and Mrs Twentyman, raised to a pinnacle of wealth, to become infatuated with the first young waiter who comes along. It is simply an aberration, and even if it corresponded to your nature and temperament, you would nevertheless have to triumph over it out of respect for propriety and the natural laws of society. Now you'll be a good, sensible child, won't you? Let me go, and return to Mummy.'
'Oh, Armand, how can you be so cold and cruel when you have said, after all, that you do love me a little? Go back to Mummy? I hate Mummy and she hates me, but Daddy loves me and will become reconciled to everything if we simply confront him with an accomplished fact. We just have to flee — let's flee tonight on the express, to Spain, for example, to Morocco, that's what I came to propose to you. We will go into hiding there and I will present you with a child that will be the accomplished fact, and Daddy will be reconciled when we throw ourselves at his feet with the child, and he'll give us his money so that we will be rich and happy. ... Your lips!'
And the mad child actually behaved as though she wanted to conceive a child by me on the spot.
'That's enough, decidedly enough, dear little Eleanor,' I said finally, removing her arms from about my neck with gentle considerateness. 'These are all preposterous dreams, and I do not intend on their account to abandon my course in life or take this by-path. It's not at all right and doesn't agree with your protestations of love for you to assail me this way with your proposals and try to lead me astray at a time when I have heavy cares of another sort and am faced by a dilemma from a quite different quarter. You're very egotistical, do you know that? But that's the way you all are, and I am not angry at you. Instead, I thank you, and I will never forget little Eleanor. But now let me go about my duties in the lobby.'
She burst into tears. 'No kiss! No child! Poor, unhappy me! Poor little Eleanor, so miserable and disdained!' And with her tiny hands in front of her face she threw herself into one of the leather chairs, sobbing as though her heart would break. I was about to step up to her and pat her comfortingly before leaving. This, however, was reserved for someone else. At that moment a man entered — not just a man, it was Lord Strathbogie of Nectan Hall. In his faultless evening dress, his feet shod not in patent leather but in dull, flexible lambskin, his freshly shaved cheeks gleaming with cream, he advanced, his jutting nose thrust forward. With his head inclined a little toward one shoulder, he stood looking thoughtfully at the weeping girl from under his slanting brows; he approached her chair and sympathetically stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. With swimming eyes and open mouth she looked up, startled, at the st
ranger, leaped from her chair, and ran out of the room like a weasel through the door opposite the glass one.
He stared after her thoughtfully as before. Then he turned to me calmly and with a regal demeanour.
'Felix,' he said, 'the last moment has come for your decision. I leave early tomorrow morning. You will have to pack your things tonight if you are going to accompany me to Scotland. What have you decided?'
'Milord,' I replied, 'I thank you most humbly and I beg your indulgence. I do not feel equal to the position you have so kindly offered me and I have come to the conclusion that I had better give up any idea of pursuing this by-path.'
'It's impossible for me,' he said in reply, 'to take seriously your plea of inadequacy. Moreover,' he added, glancing at the door, 'I have the impression that your affairs here have been concluded.'
At this I pulled myself together and replied: 'I must conclude this one as well, and I take the liberty of wishing your lordship a very pleasant journey.'
He bowed his head, and raised it only slowly to look at me in his peculiar fashion, his eyes revealing the effort it cost him.
'Felix!' he said, 'aren't you afraid of making the greatest mistake of your life?'
'That's just what I fear, milord, and hence my decision.'
'Because you don't feel equal to the position I am offering you? I should be much surprised if you do not concur in my feeling that you were born for positions of a quite different kind. My interest in you opens possibilities you do not take into account with your refusal. I am childless and master of my own affairs. There have been cases of adoption. ... You might wake up one day as Lord Strathbogie and heir to my possessions.'
That was strong. Indeed, he certainly sprang all his mines at once. Ideas swirled through my mind, but they did not incline me to alter my decision. That would be a suspect lordship, the one he dangled before me because of his interest. Suspect in the eyes of the people and lacking the proper authority. But that was not the main thing. The main thing was that a confident instinct within me rebelled against a form of reality that was simply handed to me and was in addition sloppy — rebelled in favour of free play and dreams, self-created and self-sufficient, dependent, that is, only on imagination. When as a child I had woken up determined to be an eighteen-year-old prince named Karl and had then freely maintained this pure and enchanting conceit for as long as I wished — that had been the right thing for me, not what this man with his jutting nose offered me because of his interest.
I have set down in hasty and condensed form what then flashed through my mind. I said firmly: 'Forgive me, milord, if I confine my answer to a repetition of my best wishes for your journey.'
At this he blanched, and suddenly I saw his chin begin to quiver.
Who would be so inhuman as to blame me for the fact that at this sight my eyes reddened, perhaps even filled — but no, probably they simply reddened? Sympathy is sympathy, only a knave would fail to be grateful for it. I said:
'But, milord, don't take this so much to heart! You met me and have seen me regularly and you took an interest in my youth. I am sincerely grateful for that, but this interest was a matter of accident; it might equally well have fastened upon somebody else. Please — I don't want to wound you or minimize the honour you have paid me, but if someone precisely like me occurs only once — each of us, of course, occurs only once — there are nevertheless millions of young men of my age and general physique, and except for the tiny bit of uniqueness, one is made very much like another. I knew a woman who declared that she was interested in the whole genre without exception — it must be essentially that way with you, too. The genre is present always and everywhere. You are returning to Scotland now — as though it weren't charmingly represented there, and as though you needed me to awaken your interest! There they wear checked jackets and, I understand, go bare-legged, which must be a pleasure to see! So there you can select a brilliant valet from the genre and you can chat with him in Gaelic, and even, in the end, adopt him. Perhaps the transfer of a lordship is not so easy as all that, but ways can be found and at least he will be a countryman of yours. I can see him as so attractive that I am convinced he will drive our accidental encounter completely out of your mind. Leave the remembrance of it to me, I will treasure it. For I promise you that these days during which I have been privileged to serve you and to advise you in the selection of your cigars, these days of your assuredly fleeting interest in me, will be remembered forever with the warmest reverence. And eat more, milord, if I may take the liberty of urging it! As for self-repudiadon, no man of heart and intelligence can agree with you there.'
Thus I spoke, and it did him some good despite the fact that he shook his head at my mention of the Highland jackets. He smiled with just the same sensitive and melancholy expression he had worn on the occasion when he had first mentioned self-repudiation. As he did so, he took a very handsome emerald from his finger. I had often admired it on his hand, and I am wearing it now as I write these lines. Not that he put it on my finger, he did not do that, but simply handed it to me and said softly and brokenly:
'Take this ring. It is my wish. I thank you. Farewell.'
Then he turned and left. I cannot too strongly commend to the approval of the public the behaviour of this man.
So much, then, for Eleanor Twentyman and Nectan Lord Strathbogie.
CHAPTER 3
MY basic attitude toward the world and society can only be called contradictory. For all my eagerness to be on affectionate terms with them, I was frequently aware of a considered coolness, a tendency to critical reflection, which astonished me. There was, for example, an idea that occasionally preoccupied me when for a few leisure moments I stood in the lobby or dining-hall, clasping a napkin behind my back and watching the hotel guests being waited and fawned upon by blue-liveried minions. It was the idea of interchangeabilité. With a change of clothes and make-up, the servitors might often just as well have been the masters, and many of those who lounged in the deep wicker chairs, smoking their cigarettes, might have played the waiter. It was pure accident that the reverse was the fact, an accident of wealth; for an aristocracy of money is an accidental and interchangeable aristocracy.
Therefore, my imaginary transpositions sometimes succeeded very well, but not always. For, in the first place, the habit of wealth does, after all, produce at least superficial refinement, which complicated my game, and, in the second place, among the polished riff-raff of hotel society there are always a few persons whose distinction is independent of money, though naturally always accompanied by it. At times I had to select myself — no one else in the corps of waiters would do — if the imaginary substitution was to succeed. This was true in the case of a very engaging young cavalier of airy and carefree manner who did not live in the hotel but made a habit of dining with us once or twice a week, always in my section. On these occasions he would reserve a single table by telephoning to Machatschek, whose good graces he had obviously taken the trouble to acquire. The latter would notify me, his sharp eye on the table setting:
'Le Marquis de Venosta. Attention!'
Venosta, who was about my own age, treated me in a cordial, unconstrained, almost friendly fashion. I liked to see him enter in his easy, careless way. I would push in his chair unless Maître Machatschek had done so himself, and would answer his questions about my health with an appropriate tinge of deference.
'Et vous, monsieur le marquis?'
'Comme ci, comme ça. Is the food any good tonight?'
'Comme ci, comme ça — that is, excellent, exactly the way you feel, monsieur le marquis.'
'Farceur!' he would laugh. 'A lot you know about how I feel!'
He was not really handsome, but made an elegant appearance with his fine hands and neat, curly brown hair. His cheeks, however, were fat, red, and childish beneath small roguish eyes. The eyes, however, pleased me and certainly gave the lie to the melancholy he sometimes liked to assume.
'A lot you know about how I feel, m
on cher Armand, and it's easy for you to talk. Obviously you have a talent for your métier and so you are happy, whereas it seems very doubtful to me that I have any talent for mine.'
He was, in fact, a painter, studying at the Académie des Beaux Arts and sketching from the nude in his teacher's studio. This and other facts I learned in the course of the fragmentary conversations we carried on while I served him his dinner, conversations that had begun with a friendly inquiry on his part about my home and my circumstances. These questions indicated that I had impressed him as being out of the ordinary, and in answering them I avoided any particulars that might have weakened this impression. During the sporadic exchanges he spoke German and French interchangeably. He knew the former very well because his mother, 'ma pauvre mère', belonged to the German nobility. His home was in Luxemburg, where his parents, 'mes pauvres parents', lived not far from the capital in a seventeenth-century family castle surrounded by a park. This, he assured me, looked exactly like the English castles depicted on the plates on which I served him his roast beef and bombe glacée. His father was chamberlain to the Grand Duke, 'and all that'. Incidentally, or really not incidentally at all, he had a hand in the steel industry and so was 'pretty rich', as his son Louis naively added with a gesture that seemed to say: 'What do you expect him to be? Naturally he is pretty rich.' As though his own way of life, and the thick gold chain he wore around his wrist, the precious stones in his cufflinks, and the pearl in the bosom of his shirt did not clearly reveal it!
Thus when he spoke of his parents as 'mes pauvres parents' it was a fond affectation, but there was also an overtone of real sympathy, for in his opinion they had a real good-for-nothing for a son. He was supposed to have studied law at the Sorbonne, but had very quickly dropped it out of sheer boredom and, with the pained and grudging acquiescence of his parents, had turned his attention to the arts — not without serious doubts, however, about his gifts in that direction. From his words, it was clear that he regarded himself with a kind of self-complacent concern as a spoiled child, and, without being willing or able to do anything about it, admitted his parents were right in fearing he had no goal in life beyond loafing and leading a rootless bohemian existence. As to the second point, it was soon clear to me that it was not simply a question of his spiritless pursuit of an artistic career but of an unsuitable love affair as well.